A DOE spokesperson said its radiation standards are “consistent with gold standard science… focusing on protecting people and the environment while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.”
The department has already decided to abandon the long-standing radiation safety principle known as “ALARA” – the “as low as possible” standard – which directs anyone handling radioactive material to minimize exposure.
This often pushes exposure well below legal limits. Many experts agreed that the ALARA principle was sometimes applied too strictly, but the move to phase it out entirely was opposed by many leading radiation health experts.
Sources familiar with the deliberations said whether the agencies would actually change legal limits for radiation exposure remains an open question.
Internal DOE documents arguing for changing the dosing rules cite a report prepared at the Idaho National Laboratory, which was compiled with the help of the AI assistant Cloud. “It’s really strange,” said Katherine Higley, chair of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, a congressionally chartered group that studies radiation safety. “They fundamentally mistake the science.”
John Wagner, head of the Idaho National Laboratory and lead author of the report, acknowledged to ProPublica that changing radiation exposure rules is hotly debated in science. “We recognize that respected experts interpret aspects of this literature differently,” they wrote. His analysis was not the final word, he said, but was “intended to inform the debate.”
It is difficult to measure the effects of very low radiation levels, so the US has historically taken a cautious approach. Raising the dosage limit could put the US out of step with international standards.
For his part, Cohen has told the nuclear industry that he sees his job as ensuring that the government is “no longer an obstacle” to them.
In June, he rejected the notion of companies putting money into a fund for workplace accidents. “Put yourself in the shoes of one of these startups,” he said. “They’re raising hundreds of millions of dollars to do this. And then they have to go to their VCs and their board and say, listen, guys, we really need a few hundred million more dollars to put into the trust fund?”
He also suggested that regulators should not worry about preparing for so-called 100-year events — disasters that have about a 1 percent chance of occurring but could be devastating to nuclear facilities.
“When SpaceX started building rockets, they expected the rockets to explode at first,” he said.
This story originally appeared on ProPublica.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Read the original story here. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to get stories like this in your inbox.
Pratik Rebala and Kirsten Berg contributed to the research.
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